Phobia
by Sakon76
Summary: G1. Bumblebee contemplates what makes some Autobots officer material.


**Phobia**  
by K. Stonham  
released 5th February 2008

There was no question that Bumblebee greatly admired all the officers of the Autobot army. In particular, he was fond of watching the five officers of the Ark, trying to figure out what it was about them that seemed so inherently _worthy_ and modify his own behavior, emulating what he found admirable.

_(Cybertronians, like Earthlings, have a saying about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery. Sadly, this is a saying Starscream, too, holds near and dear. How did you think Megatron rose to power?)_

Jazz was clever. Prowl was smart. Ironhide was loyal. Ratchet, for all his sharp tongue, was gentle. And Prime... well, Prime was noble to a fault. Not even Megatron could deny that.

_(Though Megatron usually noted the trait in mocking terms. Bad form, as Mirage would say disapprovingly. But Mirage was--had been--an aristocrat.)_

But the one trait that Bumblebee saw that all the officers shared was an utter lack of fear. Whether it was dangling from a precipice by one wounded arm with a drop of thousands of feet below them, or facing down the barrel of a fusion cannon, or watching Cybertron's gravitational forces start to tear the Earth apart, none of them were ever anything but calm, cool, and confident. They were always on top of the situation. That's what made them officer material.

_(Among things Bumblebee didn't know: the reason Prowl and Jazz shared quarters had nothing to do with the shortage of usable living space left on the crashed spaceship. Prowl woke sometimes with a scream, nightmares repeating after battles that he'd made a mistake, that he hadn't taken a variable into consideration, that one of their crew had gotten killed and it was his fault. Jazz pulled him close, held him until the gasps and shivering and irrational fear drained away into a dull exhaustion of spirit that left Prowl deep in recharge again and feeling drained, more cross than ever the next morning, Primus have pity on those who annoyed him.)_

Bumblebee sighed to himself wistfully, sitting atop a boulder, swinging his legs as he contemplated the notion. He didn't think he could ever be fearless the way they were. There were too many things that scared him. Darkness. Death. The way his human friends aged so fast and would die so soon...

_(It also had nothing to do with being friends, or lovers. Jazz would've wanted the latter in addition to the former, but there was no time or place for it. He would never speak up and voice his desires to Prowl. He'd done too much, and was too stained by it, to ever ask for more, so he tried to be content with what he had. He cracked bad jokes when the need to be closer got to be too much, and Prowl just ended up sighing in exasperation. When Jazz woke at night it was with a quiet gasp at most, memories running through his processors. Screams could give him away if he was ever in a Decepticon-controlled area when the memories caught him, so he'd long since given up screaming. Still, somehow Prowl heard, and held him for long hours, trying to make the night brighter. In some ways that was worse than Decepticon torture.)_

Pain. Bumblebee wasn't particularly fond of pain, but he wasn't afraid of it the way he had been once. He watched Bluestreak and remembered how it had felt to still be learning to conquer that fear. Not just pain of the body, but pain of the spirit. He'd watched and learned by example how to take that pain and make it a part of him, a shield as his armor. Bluestreak hadn't got there quite yet, but he was getting closer, and Bumblebee quietly watched him get over that fear of pain and loss.

_(Ratchet wasn't afraid of anyone or anything, not even sociopathic overpowered Lamborghini twins. The CMO had a sharp tongue, acerbic wit, and a throwing arm that could nail any and or all Autobots within two hundred paces with a neatly-placed wrench to the helm. His aim with an arc-welder was even sharper. What no one saw was what happened when his medbay was actually empty. The doctor locked himself in his tiny office, turned off everything but the most vital of comm lines, and sat in the corner shivering for hours, running over each injury, what he could have done wrong, how close it was, why this slagging war was threatening to take them all. Ratchet wasn't afraid of his own death (during bleaker moods he almost anticipated it, but then who would put the Autobots back together?), but the thought that he might have lost one of his patients reduced him to a wreck until he managed to pull himself together, shove it all back into a deep, dark corner of his CPU, and stand up again. He routinely grabbed Wheeljack after each of these episodes and got cheerfully overenergized with the engineer.)_

Fear was a funny thing, Bumblebee mused. It could paralyze you, 'bot or human. But it could also be a great motivator.

_(Ironhide, like Prowl and Ratchet, was afraid of not being good enough. His nightmare was that one day he might not be fast enough to jump between Optimus and whatever Megatron's newest concoction was. That his aging body would betray him and that due to his failure Prime would die. And with him, the hope and cause of the Autobots. For the want of a nail, as the human saying went, the kingdom would be lost. His other fear was never getting to see Chromia again, and tell her one more time just how special a femme she was.)_

In the end, Bumblebee decided, it might not be possible for him to lose all fear. And it really might not be good, either. Cliffjumper was pretty fearless, and he was also pretty reckless too, ending up getting fixed by Ratchet just about as often as the Lambo twins. Maybe a good sense of fear was healthy, instilling a necessary caution in one.

_(Optimus was afraid of many things. Afraid that this energon expedition was a folly. Afraid that the brave mechs he led would never see home again. Afraid that the humans and their world would fall victim to Cybertron's war. Afraid that the humans would come to blame the Autobots for all the death and destruction that war had brought to Earth. Afraid that he was leading wrong. Afraid that he would never, ever, see sweet Elita again and be able to pretend for just a minute that she was still Ariel and he was still Orion...)_

Sighing, Bumblebee hopped off his rock and retreated back into the Ark, nodding courteously to Optimus, who stood at its entrance, gazing off into the sunset. He got a distracted nod in return and never noticed Optimus' optics follow him as he headed toward the Rec Room. And he never could have known that the Prime thought, watching him go, _There goes a brave Autobot._


End file.
